Monthly Archives: May 2016

SKF NOTE: DrumForum.org member, “Wheresmyroadie?,” posted an excellent, new-to-me, video of Kenny Clarke with a big band playing the song, Bebop. Access to such footage — especially free and easy access — started happening about 50 years after I had … Continue reading →

“Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium. “In retrospect, I think that these countless hours of aloneness … Continue reading →

Stanley Turrentine: “I tell [young musicians], ‘If you don’t love it, forget it.’ [M]y father…said: ‘Once you feel you can’t learn anything off this instrument, I would suggest that you take it to the nearest river, throw it in – … Continue reading →

There was a drugstore near the original Birdland where musicians would sometimes hang out. This writer remembers seeing [Thelonious] Monk there one cold winter night in the late fifties surrounded by a few admirers as he very carefully pulled on a … Continue reading →

SKF NOTE: May 19, 1961, Miles Davis and the Gil Evans Orchestra performed their legendary concert at Carnegie Hall. In 1998 Columbia/Legacy released a 2-CD package of the entire concert with extra songs not included with any earlier releases of … Continue reading →

In his liner notes to this recording [Tabula Rasa], Wolfgang Sander quotes Arvo Part relating a conversation he had with a Russian Orthodox monk. Part asked the monk what an artist can do to become better — write more prayers, … Continue reading →